Coconut Custard Pie Recipe

Every Wednesday my son Bill comes over for dinner. I always make him a nice home cooked meal and send him home with some leftovers. I also make dessert every Wednesday too. It is the only night of the week that dessert is guaranteed.

On the menu last week:

Chili con Carne!

Hubby and I like spicier chili, but Bill prefers it milder so I kept it toned down for him. I use Rotel canned tomatoes with chiles, dark and light kidney beans, and black beans in my chili recipe. Ground beef, onions, bell pepper, garlic, cumin and chili powder in the dutch oven and let is set on low heat for a few hours – Delicious!!

And for dessert – Coconut Custard Pie!

I had a bag of sweetened coconut in my pantry for a few months. I think I was going to make coconut macaroons with it but kept forgetting to buy maraschino cherries – and you can’t have coconut macaroons without a cherry on top!!

So the bag of coconut became Coconut Custard Pie! My mom used to make coconut custard pie every Thanksgiving and it was one of my favorites. Here’s the recipe I found on Allrecipes.com that tasted just like mom used to make.

Coconut Custard Pie

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter

1 1/2 cups white sugar

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 eggs

1 cup milk

1 cup flaked coconut

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch single crust pie

1 tablespoon flaked coconut

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

In a large bowl, beat together butter or margarine, sugar, and eggs with an electric mixer on low speed. Blend in flour. Mix in 1/2 cup of milk at a time. Add 1 cup coconut and vanilla, and mix well.

Pour filling into unbaked pie shell. Sprinkle top with additional coconut before baking, just enough to lightly cover the top. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, or until set.

This recipe is for unsweetened coconut – since I had sweetened coconut I cut the sugar down to 1 cup instead of 1 1/2 cups. I also used heavy cream instead of milk because I had some that I wanted to use up. The custard was nice and firm but still smooth and creamy, so if I make this again I will use heavy cream or half and half instead of milk.

Good question Jan! I believe coconut cream is more like a pudding which is thickened with corn starch on the stove top. Custard is thickened with egg and baked. I love both. I still have some coconut leftover maybe I’ll do a coconut cream pie with it. Oh I’ll add some pineapple bits and lime juice for a nice tropical treat!! I love chili! Do you use beans? Apparently there are areas out West that don’t put beans in chili. Which seems very strange to me – I’ve always used beans! 😀

Tami ~ Usually I add beans, first to stretch the recipe, and also because I like them. I know that they aren’t allowed in chili cook-offs. In the official sanctioned cook-offs it’s meat only. I made some buffalo chili once that was really tasty. Around here, I don’t know how “out west” you consider Oklahoma, but we make it both ways and only the competitive cooks I know are picky about it. The rest of us eat it either way. I think Texas has more of a “meat-only” chili crowd.
I think you’re right about the pudding making it a cream pie. I think banana cream pie is also made like a pudding. The only pie I make is Key Lime. My grandma lived in Key West and she always had one in the freezer when we arrived on vacation. Her recipe (the one I use) is refrigerated, not baked. Now my mouth is watering! I think I need to find some Key Lime juice!
Jan

Great now I want Key Lime Pie Jan!! I’m from CT and I’ve only ever had chili with beans. I didn’t even know about the Texas no-bean rule until a few years ago from some Food Network show. I’m heading off to the grocery store a little later this morning and I think I need to find some Key Lime juice too! I bought a bag of key limes once to make pie and squeezed the entire bag of those tiny limes by hand! It was delicious but oh my word – so much work!! I buy the bottled key lime juice now. 😀

Yeah, the first time I made a Key Lime pie I also squeezed those little tiny limes by hand. And they have soooooo many seeds! Whew! So glad to have found bottled Key Lime juice!
It’s not a Texas thing, it’s the International Chili Society who rules the roost when it comes to chili cook-offs. Here’s how they define chili:
“any kind of meat or combination of meats,cooked with red chili peppers, various spices and other ingredients, with the exception of BEANS and PASTA which are strictly forbidden. No garnish is allowed.”
Now I agree with the “no pasta” rule. If it has pasta in it it’s not chili no matter how many chili peppers they use.
A place I used to work had periodic potluck lunches. Once we had a “chili cook-off” and a bunch of us made chili, just any which way we wanted… little did we know a couple of our employees were cook-off winners. Competed a LOT. They got all bent out of shape when the rest of us showed up with beans, and all kinds of garnishes. That’s when I learned about the “meat only” rule.
Sorry I didn’t reply sooner! I was actually sleeping when this came in at 4:24 AM CDT. 🙂

Oh Jan – I can never be a supporter of the International Chili Society – I NEED a lot of cheese and sour cream in my chili for garnish!!! My mother always made it with elbow macaroni – I think mostly to stretch two pounds of hamburger to feed a family of six! 😀

Me too! In fact I’ll get a smallish serving of chili and then pile it with sour cream, a couple of cheeses, green onions, some cilantro, and avocado! Then scoop it with tortilla chips instead of a spoon. The trick is getting a bite of avocado in every bite of chili. Yum.